


Circuit Overload

by susiecarter



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Communication Failure, Consent Issues, Extra Treat, Fuck Or Die, Light Angst, M/M, Pining, Post-Canon, Sex Pollen, Wire Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-20
Updated: 2018-11-20
Packaged: 2019-08-26 15:39:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16684384
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiecarter/pseuds/susiecarter
Summary: It happened because Connor put something in his mouth.Hank didn't see him do it. Even if he had, it was comfortable routine by now: he told Connor not to, or that it was disgusting, or just made a dry-heaving noise, and Connor ignored him and did it anyway. He wouldn't have been able to stop it, not until it was already too late.





	Circuit Overload

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Masu_Trout](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Masu_Trout/gifts).



> In the "interaction with an unexpected substance renders sex medically necessary" sense, this is sex pollen, but it's slightly to the left of _actual_ sex pollen—hopefully it captures the spirit well enough to be an enjoyable read anyway! :D I'm weak for mutual guilt and mutual pining in dubcon scenarios, so your request was a dream come true, Masu_Trout, and I tried to slide as much robot-specific wire-fondling in there as I could. Happy Tropefest!
> 
> (The M rating is solely for the wire-fondling, because it seemed like a bit too much sex to get away with a T, even if it's kind of unusual sex.)

 

 

It happened because Connor put something in his mouth.

Hank didn't see him do it. Even if he had, it was comfortable routine by now: he told Connor not to, or that it was disgusting, or just made a dry-heaving noise, and Connor ignored him and did it anyway. He wouldn't have been able to stop it, not until it was already too late.

He was opening the suspect's refrigerator—not really expecting to find much of anything, but figuring one of them should take a look on principle. He heard Connor say, "Hmm. Standard thirium, unprocessed. But our suspect is human."

"And if he wanted red ice," Hank agreed absently, "there are easier ways to get it than starting with unprocessed blue blood, yeah."

"Why would he have this?"

Hank looked out of the fridge to cast his eyes up toward the ceiling, in a way that he hoped impressed upon that ceiling the depths of his suffering. Connor had this habit of asking rhetorical questions so earnestly they sounded like real ones. Which made Hank want to say shit like _well, if I knew the answer to that, I'd probably already have solved the case, so_ —

"Well, if I knew the answer to that," he started, flatly, and then something caught his attention.

He couldn't have said what, later, if anybody had asked. Maybe Connor had scuffed a shoe against the floor, or made a sound, or moved funny somewhere in Hank's peripheral vision. Whatever it was, it made him lift his head and turn a little, and then he saw Connor and turned around for real, fridge door left hanging open behind him, reaching to grab for Connor's shoulders.

Because Connor was—his LED had lit up red, stark and alarming, and his face had gone weird, his gaze unfocused and inward-looking in that way he got when he was doing some android thing. Or rather specifically that way he got when he was doing some android thing so intently that he'd forgotten to close his eyes. Because most of the time he shut them first—part of his programming, Hank had always figured, to make him blend in better.

"Connor," he said, sharp, and Connor looked at him in that blank unseeing way and then opened his mouth, and a thin stream of thirium trickled from one corner.

That had to be bad. Right?

"Connor—"

"Just ejecting the sample, Lieutenant," Connor said, and his voice even mostly sounded okay, in a way Hank might have believed if his LED weren't still cycling relentlessly red. He hesitated for a second, and then added more quietly, "I'm afraid I wasn't fast enough."

"Wasn't fast enough for what? Connor, what did that shit have in it?"

"A selection of very simply-engineered nanomachines," Connor said, still way too calmly for Hank's taste.

" _Nanites_? You kidding me?" Medical nanites were standard for lots of shit these days—and old news, too, since the fad for going small had been dropped in favor of human-sized robots well before Kamski came along.

"Very simply-engineered, as I said," and Connor had gotten a little snippy; that was good, Hank thought. When Connor was really freaked out, he couldn't manage snippy anymore, which was even scarier than the way he threw himself at suspects or onto active expressways. Or the way he stuck dangerous shit in his mouth.

"Yeah? Can you get rid of them?"

"They completed their task and became inert," Connor said. "They were ejected with the sample."

By which he meant the stuff still trailing from the corner of his mouth. Freaked Hank out just looking at it, ejected sample or not, and he reached up before he could talk himself out of it and rubbed the thirium off Connor's jaw with his thumb.

Fuck, he hated this crap. It was sort of slimy, and the temperature or viscosity or something was off somehow—it always felt just a little like cooling blood.

"Completed their task," he said belatedly, rubbing his thumb against his palm. "And what the hell was that, exactly?"

"Delivering a series of compressed data packets to my main system," Connor said, perfectly evenly. And then, without any warning at all, he sort of spasmed a little under Hank's hands. The LED went briefly yellow, and for a second Hank's heart leapt—and then it dropped to red again, and then Hank didn't know what the hell happened.

He felt like he blinked, and then was suddenly falling. Except he wasn't falling but moving, and he had about half a second to figure that out and then hit the side of the suspect's fridge hard enough to knock the breath clean out of him. Connor had—had grabbed him, had grabbed him and slammed him backwards, and was pinning him against the refrigerator with that weird blank look on his face and that LED spinning: red, red, red.

"Connor," Hank said carefully, and reached up to wrap one hand around Connor's wrist. "Connor, talk to me. The data packets, what did they—"

"I am," Connor said, and then stopped. He had Hank pinned at the chest with one hand, the other at one of Hank's shoulders; and then dropping, haltingly, toward—

Toward Hank's holster. Toward Hank's gun.

"I am attempting to process distinctly contradictory priorities," Connor said. "I believe the data packets have combined themselves into a virus meant to destabilize androids with the ranked-objective model of artificial cognitive processing, of which I am one. It's causing considerable system-wide stresses."

And he meant it in a stupid computer way, probably, Hank thought. But for a second all Hank could hear was Connor's voice saying _deviants have a tendency to self-destruct in stressful situations_ , and all Hank could picture was Carlos Ortiz's android, wide wet eyes and blue-smeared forehead, just before he'd shot himself in the head.

These days Connor was a deviant, too.

"Okay," Hank said aloud, as evenly as he could. "Okay, well," and then, because he'd never been much good at keeping his mouth shut, "I don't suppose you've got a way to resolve it that _doesn't_ involve you shooting yourself in the head?"

Connor blinked and looked at him—actually looked at him, his eyes focused on Hank's face for real for the first time since he'd licked that stupid nanite-infested thirium. "A core dump," he said. "Six hundred seconds. Active and working memory will be quarantined in buffered secondary storage. Lieutenant—Hank. I'm sorry. You'll have to help me," and then he grabbed Hank's hand and shoved it up under his shirt, that stupid skinny tie of his flopping sideways.

It might as well have been Lithuanian, instead of technical gibberish. Hank couldn't parse a word of it, couldn't do anything except stand there and stare at Connor. His—his skin was gone under there, Hank realized dimly. That was why he felt so slick and glossy-smooth against Hank's fingertips. It was the white under-shell of him that Hank was touching.

"Uh, Connor—"

"Sufficiently intense and unusual sensory data," Connor said, and then his hand kind of jerked where it was wrapped around Hank's forearm, grip tightening spasmodically—and Hank jerked too, reflexive, startled, and his palm slid a little against Connor, and Connor's mouth fell open. In a slack sort of way, helpless, like for a second he'd lost control of whatever gadgetry was under there. It wasn't hot.

It _wasn't_ hot.

Dammit, Hank thought. Not the time. There was something seriously wrong with Connor, and Hank needed to get a motherfucking grip.

"It's a high-priority system. Sensory input is crucial. A forced reset will—"

"Core dump," Hank managed, "yeah, yeah, I heard you. So, uh. Okay," and he swallowed hard and skimmed his fingers across Connor's bare un-skinned torso until he found the join of a couple plates of under-shell, and Connor made an odd noise and twitched again.

Six hundred seconds. Ten minutes. If the memory dump was only going to go that far back, then Hank had to get this done with less than ten minutes elapsed since the virus's introduction to Connor's system. Take off fifteen seconds to be safe, and how many minutes had they already wasted talking about it? So call it five minutes instead of ten, with some margin for error baked in.

Five minutes, Hank thought, to give Connor more sufficiently intense and unusual sensory data than he could handle.

And fuck, that made it sound like sex, too. Hank grimaced at himself. Exactly the wrong day to be brimming over with creepy old man thoughts. If he'd known this would happen, he'd have made the effort to jerk off this morning; at his age, that was more than enough to settle him down for a while. Just his luck.

But he couldn't waste time bitching himself out. He stood there and let Connor hold him pinned against the refrigerator, and he pressed against those under-shell joins, rubbed his thumb along them, and did his best to keep his stupid head on straight.

To be fair to his stupid head, though, it turned out that a lot of symptoms of base system dysfunction were—well, they were kind of like sex.

Connor's breathing got uneven, hitching and ragged. Which was probably just whatever procedure-set he had to regulate his automated fake respiration getting corrupted, but the outward effect was kind of hard to ignore. All those times Connor'd taken off like a rabbit after suspects, he'd never come back breathing hard. And Hank knew it didn't actually matter. But somewhere deep down in his lizard brain, it still felt like it meant something, that his hand was on Connor and Connor was like this, the idiot wordless primate underneath insistent on causation over correlation.

And then something moved under Hank's hand, and it was—Connor must have been able to get at least one instruction through his half-destabilized system, because that central plate of under-shell suddenly retracted, in fits and starts.

Hank didn't bother asking whether it was safe. Shoving his hand into Connor's innards probably wasn't going to break Connor worse than whatever the virus would do to him if this didn't work. But there was one thing he _did_ need to know, dammit.

"Is this working? I mean, if I—is this going to be enough to—" He was already reaching in tentatively, blindly, and he found some kind of conduit, a big thick ribbed cable with a couple smaller smoother ones running alongside. He rubbed his fingertips along it, and he didn't even mean to—he just wanted to get a sense for himself of where it went to, but Connor swayed toward him and for a moment wasn't breathing at all, regulator offline entirely.

"Yes, that's—like that. It's—I receive internal sensory data to help me detect damage. Critical system conduits and junctions are—are particularly—yes, _yes_ , Hank, like that—"

Jesus Christ. Hank screwed his eyes shut. And he'd thought he'd be in danger of sounding like bad porn dialogue, asking Connor where to touch him and how much, what would work the best. Connor didn't even sound like bad porn dialogue; he sounded like somebody having sex.

And really, wasn't he? Sensory data sufficiently intense to force a reset: if that wasn't robot talk for an orgasm, then what was?

Hank swallowed hard. That just made it worse, if anything—because Connor _needed_ this, was trying to avoid fatal or crippling damage to his systems, and Hank was the only person around to help him with it; and for Connor it was intimate and sexual and probably pretty fucking terrifying all at the same time, and Hank was _getting off on it_.

But fuck, how much time did he have left? Probably three minutes, tops. He could yell at himself for being a creepy asshole later. Right now, he needed to get this done.

He did everything he could think of. Pressed the wires between his fingers, and against each other. Felt for their junctions, connections, rubbed around them where Connor probably had sensors to tell him if anything was loose—and that gave him a whole new direction to go in. He didn't want to break anything important, but easing half a dozen of the smaller wires just out of place at the same time, and then back in, was simple enough.

And it made Connor tremble, made him jerk and shudder and lean into Hank—because, Hank reminded himself, whatever internal gyros and weight sensors he used to balance himself were probably going haywire. It made Connor's fingertips press into Hank's chest, made his head fall back—because he was gradually losing the ability to regulate his own motion.

Hank stroked along the inside surfaces of Connor's under-shell, and wrapped a hand around that big ribbed cable and squeezed, and reached even further in, in and up a little, until he could feel what he thought had to be the housing for Connor's thirium pump regulator. Which meant these half-dozen softer bits of tubing that ran off to either side were for thirium circulation.

Had to be a zillion more of them, plus whatever hard-light capillary system transferred thirium through Connor's skin. No way he could hurt Connor by pinching these half-dozen off tight, fingers pressing them flat against the inside of Connor's under-shell, at the same time that he slid the smaller cables he'd been working on back into their junction housings with his other hand—

Connor made a strange sound in Hank's ear, a deep wordless vibrating note almost too quiet to hear; and he froze against Hank, perfectly and terrifyingly still in the way only androids could be.

Hank swallowed, and then let out a slow breath. No reason to panic, not just yet. That was normal, at least for androids—Connor had an "unanticipated rest" state, a feature, that held him stiff as a doll. Joint stabilizers, standard, so he couldn't damage himself by falling while inactive.

Hank eased back a little bit against the fridge and drew his hands carefully out of Connor's torso, absently smoothing Connor's shirt and tie back down after. Connor's eyes were still open, and the LED was—it had gone dark. Did that mean it had worked? Was Connor resetting? Or had the virus cracked him open more quickly than he'd anticipated? Maybe they hadn't even had ten minutes to start with, maybe it had been faster than that. Hank knew the best thing he could do was wait another minute to see what happened and then call in. To the station, to the maintenance outreach organization that ran out of what was left of CyberLife these days. There was no reason to think just yet that Connor wouldn't be okay, no evidence; and if you didn't have evidence, you didn't have a case.

But fuck, it was hard to shake the thought that, stiff like this, Connor resembled nothing so much as a corpse in rigor mortis—

The LED lit up.

Red. Hank bit his cheek and made himself wait. Red. Red. Jesus Christ, how long could the boot sequence possibly take?

And then, with a flicker, the LED cycled to yellow.

"Oh, thank fuck," Hank said fervently, and by the time it was blue and Connor's eyes blinked themselves open, he'd moved a step away, to a totally normal just-regular-colleagues-who-haven't-felt-up-each-other's-internal-organs kind of distance, and also belatedly closed that wide-open refrigerator door.

"Hank," Connor said.

"You're okay," Hank said, and waited for some barrage of technobabble that was going to mean the same thing as _yes, I'm okay_.

But Connor just looked at him for a second, and then—oh. Then he reached up with one hand to touch his uniform shirt, and underneath there he was—he was probably putting himself back together, closing up his under-shell again.

Hank tried not to notice the LED cycling briefly yellow, and totally failed.

"I believe we were successful," Connor said, when the LED was blue again. "There appears to be no trace of the virus in my active systems. I'll contain it within buffered storage until it can be transferred to a technical workstation for analysis."

And—right, he'd dumped his memory. Hank swallowed and ignored the cold pit opening up at the bottom of his stomach, and said, "And you—your six hundred seconds of memory?"

"Accessible," Connor evaluated after a moment, and fuck, Hank didn't even know whether to think it was good or bad, that he remembered after all.

He made himself look away from Connor, and cleared his throat. "Well. Better finish up with the rest of the apartment, then," he said, and then jabbed a finger into Connor's face. "And for fuck's sake, _don't_ put anything else in your mouth. Understand?"

"My forensic analysis capabilities are an invaluable investigative tool," Connor said, in that stuffed-shirt way he got whenever he started listing off his own features.

And Hank rolled his eyes and said, "Oh, spare me," and Connor grinned at him, and it was almost like they were totally okay and it hadn't happened at all.

Almost, except for how Hank was half-hard in his jeans the entire rest of the afternoon. That part sucked.

 

 

 

They made it through almost the whole day without talking about it.

Which was ideal, as far as Hank was concerned, except he was discovering to his own dismay that he also couldn't stand it.

He kept catching himself staring at Connor across their desks, as they went through the little they'd found at the guy's apartment, and then back through the case file all over again. He didn't even know why. Obviously the best thing to do about this was just pretend it didn't matter at all until it actually didn't matter at all, and also never ever speak of it.

It was just that it was fucking with his head. He stared at his workstation and wished half-heartedly that _he_ could dump his goddamn memory, because then he'd have to stop thinking about it. Then he wouldn't be able to replay the way Connor's smooth, clean un-skinned surfaces had felt against his hands, or the way Connor had shuddered against him. He wouldn't be able to keep fucking picturing Connor's mouth all slack like that, Connor's eyes drifting halfway closed, Connor's hand clutching so desperately at Hank's chest—

Jesus! Hank screwed his eyes shut and spent a solid minute calling himself names in his head, and then he made himself look at his workstation, his screen, and he read the goddamn case file for the fifteenth goddamn time and didn't think about anything else.

By the time he was done with it, they were just about the only two people left in the station. Hank sighed and rubbed his face, twisted around in his chair to crack his back, and tried not to wonder what Connor was even doing over there. He didn't have to sit around rereading case files, not when he had a copy in his brain that he could access whenever he needed to. But he was still in his chair, one pale shiny un-skinned hand pressed flat to his workstation.

Hank realized way too late that he was staring at that hand, and he knew it was stupid but he just wasn't quick enough to get in his own way: sheer guilty reflex brought his eyes snapping up to Connor, and yeah, Connor had noticed. Connor had noticed and was looking right back at him.

Shit.

"Lieutenant," Connor said quietly.

And there was only one thing that tone had to mean. "Aw, geez, Connor, do we really have to do this?" Hank said, hand over his eyes.

"Yes, I think so," and Connor had that earnest, thoughtful tone like it was a real question and not just Hank being annoying. "I—I value our friendship, Hank."

"Yeah," Hank heard himself say, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "I mean—me too. You know that, right?"

"Yes," Connor said, and the way he said it, soft and pleased, even a little smug—as if Hank considering him a friend were a prize he'd won, a reward he got all to himself—made Hank kind of want to smile all of a sudden, even though it really wasn't the right time for it. "Yes, I do. And I realize that what you did for me today must have been ... difficult for you."

Hank blinked, and he had to look at Connor then. Connor was—he seemed serious, hands carefully folded on his desk, and he hadn't been looking at Hank either; he was staring at Hank's desk instead, at a doughnut box that was three-quarters empty, and for once he probably wasn't calculating calories.

"You felt obligated to assist me," Connor was saying, "not just because you value our friendship or partnership, but because you're a good man. You wouldn't have let me be damaged if you could prevent it, regardless of any cost to yourself. And of course I'm well aware that your psychological profile predisposes you to undervalue or dismiss cost to yourself in any case—"

"Whoa, okay, hang on," Hank said loudly, because Connor had started talking faster and faster, and clearly wasn't going to be putting the brakes on anytime soon. "Hang on, slow down. Are you—are you trying to _apologize_ to me?"

Connor's gaze snapped to Hank. "You were placed in a situation where you were forced to settle for the least objectionable alternative," he began, mulish, and yeah, that was a yes if Hank had ever heard one.

"You have got to be fucking kidding me! It's not _your_ fault that alongside all the rape and murder, this creepy bastard was trying to figure out how to digitally poison thirium on the side." Hank shook his head. "Jesus, Connor. I'd do a hell of a lot worse to save your life than grope your innards for a minute."

"For six minutes and thirteen seconds," Connor said immediately, and Hank felt his face heat. Just because it sounded so—it sounded like—

He gritted his teeth and rubbed his face again. "Look, can we just drop it? You were in trouble, turns out I could help you, we're both still alive and your brain's not fried. Call it a win and forget about it, huh?"

"You shouldn't have had to," Connor insisted, because god forbid he actually do what Hank told him to for once. "You must have realized that I was—that you were being required to engage in the closest equivalent I have to human sexual activity—"

" _Jesus_ , Connor!"

"—and that must have made you uncomfortable, even if by your standards it wasn't an interaction that would normally be categorized as sexual."

"Or else maybe I have a much more complicated relationship with my car than I realized," Hank said, muffled by the way he'd let his face drop despairingly into his hands. And then he made himself sit up again and look Connor in the face, and he said, very carefully and slowly, "It's not a problem, okay? You're the one who was staring down brain damage or whatever. I could have walked out of there any time."

Except Connor didn't look convinced. Connor looked the opposite of convinced: he was staring at Hank with the barest little furrow in his brow, his mouth pressed into a flat line. And then he said, softly, even gently, "No, you couldn't have. I told you, Hank, you're a good man. You wouldn't have left me there like that. You want me to think you had a choice, but I know you better than that. I know you didn't."

And Hank realized right then, sitting there with Connor looking at him like that, that there was no way out. Funny, that Connor wanted to apologize for trapping Hank so bad that he was trapping Hank all over again. Because Hank was—he was just going to have to say it.

He braced himself, breathed in deep and let it out slow, and then he made himself meet Connor's eyes, and he spit it out: "It was hot."

Connor blinked.

"It was hot, and I got off on it," and Hank made sure he was enunciating each excruciating word precisely, because he really didn't want to have to say this more than once. "It was—I was into it, and if you hadn't been maybe about to die, I would've enjoyed it. So just quit fucking apologizing. I'm fine."

He stopped, and then it was—there was just silence. Connor was staring at him, and Hank was about to crack, grab his coat and stand up and just get the hell out of there, when Connor said, "I'd never felt anything like that before."

Jesus. Hank grimaced, except really it was more of a full-body cringe. He was the _first one_ to grope Connor's innards! Wasn't that just great. Connor's first experience with having his wires messed with, and it had been under duress, his brain halfway to melting out his ears, with _Hank_. Fan-fucking-tastic.

"When I went in for maintenance," Connor was saying, "the CyberLife techs always turned my internal sensors off. They'd only have set off my damage assessment systems unnecessarily."

Which, if you translated it out of robot, meant "it would have hurt", Hank thought.

"Yeah, god forbid you register any objections to them cracking open your guts and fiddling around," he said aloud, looking away. "Listen, Connor—"

"So it never felt like that," Connor said. "I—I didn't know it would."

God, he couldn't listen to this.

"I think I want to try it again."

"Well, that's fantastic," Hank said. "Self-discovery is a beautiful thing! Congratulations. Find somebody you like and go to town. In the meantime, Sumo needs his dinner, so I really have to—"

"Hank," Connor said, more sharply.

Hank bit the inside of his cheek, hard, and made himself look at Connor again.

The expression on Connor's face was outright frustrated, now, that furrow only carving itself deeper, his brows drawn down and his mouth and jaw tight. "I'm failing to communicate my intentions correctly," he said, "and I'm not sure why. Hank—"

"No, you're not," Hank conceded. "I just don't think it's a good idea, okay? You should—you should get to have the robot sex of your dreams. Just pick somebody else, that's all." Hank waved a hand in the general direction of, you know, the entire rest of Detroit. "Somebody you like, somebody who cares about you. Somebody who's going to try their best not to fuck you up—"

"You fit all of your stated criteria, Lieutenant," Connor said, and his tone was starting to get a little hot with impatience.

"Yeah, except for how _I_ am definitely not the right person—"

"Why not?"

And Hank couldn't help it, it was such a ridiculous thing to be arguing about; he laughed and rubbed his eyes, shook his head and said, "Really? You need to ask?"

Except, of course, those kinds of questions didn't work on Connor unless he decided to let them.

"Yes, Hank," Connor said. "Yes, I think I do. Because I don't understand your opposition, and I'd like to hear your answer. You seem to expect me to simultaneously believe that you had no objections to what occurred this afternoon, and that in fact you enjoyed it; that even if you hadn't, you'd consider any objections you might have had meaningless compared to the prospect of saving my life, because you care about me a great deal; _and_ that you are nevertheless an unsuitable candidate for any pursuit of further intimacy." He hesitated for a second, and cocked his head a little, and added, "Do you consider me a person?"

And no way would he ask a question he already fucking knew the answer to unless he was trying to make a point, and it wasn't hard for Hank to guess what sort of point it might be. "Yes," Hank said anyway, and then, before Connor could jump in again, "and yes, that does mean you get to make your own decisions, but you don't get to make mine. I'm not—" He stopped and shook his head again. "Look, you're a prototype, right? So go find another prototype and blow each other's minds. I'm thirty years out of date, Connor, and there's no updating this hardware. Okay? You should—you deserve better."

"Better," Connor repeated. He watched Hank for a second, eyes narrowing, and then he stood up and rounded the ends of their desks, and oh, that was going nowhere good.

"Connor—"

"If better isn't you," Connor said, "then I don't want it."

Jesus.

"Hank, there will be newer models after me. There already have been. The RK800 313 248 317-60—he was newer. Improvements were made. Did you prefer him?"

"That crazy asshole version of you who shot me? No," Hank said flatly, "no, I can't say I did."

"If there were one who wasn't a crazy asshole," Connor amended, calm, gaze steady on Hank's face. He'd come around the side of the desk, was leaning on it the way he liked to do, and he was watching Hank without looking away. "A genuine advancement. An RK900 or RK1000. If someday one is sent here to the precinct, objectively superior in every measurable respect, will you have me deconstructed and recycled?"

" _No_ ," Hank said, helpless, because of course there wasn't any other answer, but—

"I was programmed," Connor added, more quietly, "to make objective assessments. If anything, it's working with you that's taught me the value of the subjective, too. And subjectively, Hank—there is no 'better', not to me. You are already optimal."

Connor was an android, yeah, but he didn't have superspeed. Hank had time to move away from the hand he brought up to rest against Hank's jaw.

Hank had time, and he should've done it.

But he didn't. And Connor leaned in and tipped Hank's face up and brought their mouths carefully together, and Hank didn't stop that either, because he was just too goddamn selfish.

He closed his eyes and leaned up into it instead, and then managed to ease back before he could find himself trying to pin Connor to the desk and licking his mouth open. Connor eased back, too, but only a little, and when Hank cleared his throat and muttered, "You're still wrong," the words came out practically against Connor's cheek.

And he couldn't see it but could feel it, brief scrape of Connor's face against his beard, when Connor smiled.

"Oh, I have every confidence that you'll come to accept my superior logic, Lieutenant," Connor said loftily, deliberately pretentious.

"Or maybe I'll lie and tell you I have, just to shut you up," Hank said, and kissed him again.

 

 


End file.
